Sohan Karuna

‍Contemporary B2B marketing is closing the gap

In the marketing realm, it’s a common precedent to pit B2B and B2C marketing against each other. And rightly so, given their inherently dissimilar attributes with who they’re selling to, how long it takes to make a purchase, etc. With that said, research and technology have proven there are a lot alike between the two. They might be subtle but understanding those subtleties are impactful for the long haul.

Technology has shown us the prevalence of digital customers in B2B buyer personas is similar to that of B2C. With B2B marketing showing a progressive interest in becoming more brand-oriented, research has shown us the importance of emotional connection at higher levels of a B2B element value. Like in B2C, building a social media presence or making more personalized content to promote branding has shifted the agenda of B2B marketing. To emphasize further, here are 4 things B2B marketing could adopt from B2C marketing.

4 things b2b could adopt from b2c marketing

1. Marketing to People:

This translates to the personalisation of your marketing strategy that will tend to customers’ emotional and logical needs. B2C marketing for the longest time has honed the art of delivering personalized messages to individual prospects. While historically B2B marketing has been informational/educational akin to the needs of the several decision-makers involved. B2B prospects are nurtured with their need to research.

You’ll be surprised to know that adding a personal element to your interaction in your marketing promotes perceived brand value. In fact, B2B customers are 50% more likely to convert when they see personal value, and are 8x likely to pay a premium for a comparable service. The use of dynamic content that corresponds with a user’s needs on a website, and B2B email marketing to establish a personal tone, are some examples of personalisation. This isn’t to diminish the informational/professional element of B2B marketing but to add a personal touch to the same.

2. Building a Community Around the Brand:

From a business relationship to fans of the brand. Presumably, this is much harder for a B2B organization to achieve, while it’s second nature for most B2C brands. OnePlus for example built a community forum that gives users access to news, discussion and social features. This not only promotes the brand and its products but also allows for more customer engagement.

There are different channels through which B2B companies can build their communities. This can include creating a subreddit and uploading infographics on YouTube. Using these mediums could prove to be more useful than building your own forum thanks to the already well established B2B marketing communities within them. If you are keen on building one with a more tight-knit approach, consider forming a public discord server or a public slack channel.

When it comes to building a social media presence in B2B, having a social media presence alone won’t cut the mustard. Instead, a continual effort to build through customer engagement is key. B2C brands often create community posts and polls on Twitter, create short quizzes, answer queries, etc. This dynamic however is hard to build over the professional overtone, but adopting its practice should facilitate some creative and original content. It is also important to utilize a wide array of social media platforms, and not ones that might generate the most prospects.

Influencer marketing is something B2C marketing is all too familiar with. And for good reasons, people are more likely to purchase something with more credibility. But before you do so, you would have to sell the product to your influencer first, which involves a great deal of good faith and trust. The influencer marketing space in B2C is cataclysmically large, to scale the same for B2B would be pretty impractical. Instead, an affiliate program that incentivises existing customers to recommend the product or service to others. Even leaving reviews on authentic platforms like G2 increases the credibility of your brand by having other brands and marketing leaders vouch for it.

3. Buyer Personas and B2B Mobile Traffic:

Building a strong buyer persona is something B2B marketing could use to improve its content strategy and create more engaging content that addresses its challenges. This means understanding your target audience. In B2B this represents all the decision-makers involved, their pain points, goals and most importantly intent data. Research shows that B2B companies that utilize buyer personas in their content strategy perform better.

Speaking of buyer personas, it’s not unusual to expect a large portion of B2C buyers to use their mobile devices for research and queries. But what if I told you the use of mobile phones is gradually becoming the source of a lot of B2B search queries, over 50% of it to be precise. More buyers are using their phones for B2B research during work and leading organizations are generating 40% of revenue through it. Considering that mobile-first B2B generates higher engagement, site traffic, search queries and leads. Maybe it’s worth adopting from our B2C cousins.

4. Privacy and Privacy first marketing:

Becoming a privacy-first business is a big deal in this current digital climate. Given that the customer pool for the average B2C marketer is larger and its not so admirable track record with data security and privacy. More B2C marketers are becoming more proactive with their data and how they interact with it. This concerns B2B marketers as well, from a business perspective, data security is paramount. Educating yourself in B2C data security practices can be useful as most of the regulations governing these practices and the use of cookies stems from B2C practices in the past. To learn more about becoming a privacy-first business refer to this blog.

It's not hard to believe that the line between B2B and B2C marketing is getting blurry. At the very least they share the same goals. To generate as many leads and convert them. While contemporary B2B marketing adopts features of B2C marketing, the same could be said the other way around. Their culmination of experience in lead generation and conversion brings a lot to the table for the future of marketing methodology.

According to Hubspot, marketers spend nearly 210 minutes a week analyzing data from different sources. What’s interesting, though, is that marketing professionals often struggle to determine the channels that facilitate customer journeys to fuel pipeline and revenue.

Coincidence? No.  

With a gamut of channels, touchpoints, platforms, and campaigns running simultaneously, it becomes difficult to determine which marketing strategy brings value to the table. 

Especially in the case of B2B marketing, multiple online & offline channels are involved. For instance, online channels involve social media, content, email marketing, etc., whereas offline channels include ebooks, webinars, workshops, meetings, etc.  

Thankfully, marketing attribution reporting can effectively solve this problem and assist businesses in shifting from intuition-driven strategies to customer-centric and data-driven strategies. 

Attribution reporting allows marketers to do an in-depth analysis at a granular level and give a clear picture of the direct impact of marketing strategies and tactics. 

Read our blog to understand exactly what attribution reporting is and what you can learn from marketing attribution reports to put your revenue growth on the fast lane . 

Let’s get started! 

Table Of Contents

• What Is Attribution Reporting? 
• Why Use Attribution Reporting And When To Use It? 
• What You Can Learn From Marketing Attribution Reports?
• How Can Organizations Leverage Attribution Reports To Skyrocket Their Conversions?
• Bonus Information: What Is The Attribution Window 
• Wrapping Up
• FAQs

What Is Attribution Reporting? 

Attribution reporting gives you a bird's eye view of the path your customer took before converting. Moreover, it also gives an in-depth insight into how different marketing efforts have cohesively worked to fuel conversions. 

Attribution reporting will help you to determine the following. 

• From which channels are the customers first becoming aware of your brand?
• Which campaign is driving the maximum demo form submissions or signups?
• Which piece of content/ad are they interacting with between opportunity creation and closed-won?
• Provide an actionable view of the buyer’s journey across multiple stakeholders who interact with multiple touchpoints over many months. 
• A transparent overview of the channels to generate leads, nurture them and finally convert.
  

You can leverage many attribution models to create a comprehensive report, such as first interaction, last interaction, linear attribution, etc. Attribution reporting gives crystal clear insights into the specific parts of your strategy and helps you highlight the areas that need improvement. 

All in all, marketing attribution reports summarize your customer journey data by building a timeline of touchpoints at a user and account level, combine that with vital channel metrics such as impressions, clicks, and spending and visualize the insights into a cohesive and effective report

Why Use Attribution Reporting, And When To Use It? 

One of the most rewarding aspects for a marketer is to see the successful result of their efforts. Once you start noticing the number of conversions from a strategy you have implemented or a piece of content you have posted, you know you have done your job right. 

But getting conversions is just one part of the job! The most gratifying part is to be able to measure and correlate the amount spent with the business ROI. 

This is where attribution reporting comes into play. 

An attribution report is nothing but a presentable outcome of your customer journey and campaign data. Therefore, an attribution report is only as valuable as the underlying data itself. Within your Marketing Strategy, attribution fulfills the need to optimize your marketing spending, allocate resources better, scale the right initiatives, and track channel performance.

That being said, you wouldn’t want to rely on a false source of optimization or, worse, vanity metrics to determine your marketing strategy. Attribution reporting provides you a credible foundation to build a data driven marketing execution engine.

Unlike a marketing team’s requirements for tracking KPIs, which tend to be an everyday ordeal, the frequency of usage of attribution reports is determined by the following factors

• How frequently are the campaigns optimized?
• What is the conversion cycle length from first touch to revenue
• What is the cadence of executive reporting for the CMO
• How frequently are budget re-allocation decisions made at your company
  

What You Can Learn From Marketing Attribution Reports?

Here are the learnings you can expect from marketing attribution reports. 

1. Better Comparison With  Model-Based Information

Companies increasingly use a multi-channel approach to educate and inform their target audience based on their preferences.  However, when too many channels are in action, it becomes challenging to determine which channel contributed the most to pipeline and revenue. 

Attribution reporting allows marketers to determine the contribution of each channel based on the chosen model and compare the results of different types of attribution models to make your investment decisions. For example, an Influence attribution model shows the amount of pipeline and revenue influenced by each campaign or content, whereas a First Touch Attribution report only credits the campaign or content for the revenue where it was the very first touchpoint.

Further, the conversion goals in attribution can be set as Top of the Funnel KPIs such as Leads, Demos or Mid Funnel Metrics such as MQLs, SQLs or Bottom of the Funnel metrics such as Pipeline and Revenue, helping Marketers understand the influence of each channel at various stages of the funnel. 

If you are a Saas company with both a PLG flow (SignUp and then Product Milestones) as well as a sales-led flow (Demo and then Opportunity Creation), you can use attribution analysis to understand which channels are most effective for each of these go to market models.

2.  Get An Overview Of Baseline Metrics

Baseline Metrics within Attribution provide a channel-level overview of investment metrics such as Impressions, Clicks, and Spending, along with platform-specific metrics such as Keyword Match Type, Search Impression Share for Google Ads. 

Attribution reporting tools aggregate these investment metrics across channels, enabling a Marketer to understand how much are they spending by a campaign, Ad group, creative, and keyword. Using these insights, Marketers can get a complete view of the performance metrics for each Campaign.

3. Analyze Conversion Metrics

A good attribution report combines the baseline investment metrics along with conversion metrics across the funnel such as leads, demos, SQLS, pipeline, and revenue. This helps Marketing teams move beyond measuring marketing efforts on metrics such as leads and get an accurate understanding of the impact on pipeline and revenue.  

Based on this information, you can assess the following:

• How many leads does each channel or campaign generate?
• How many of these leads are then converted to demos and sales-qualified leads by the campaign?
• How much pipeline and revenue were influenced by each of these channels or campaigns?

4. To Get Clarity On ROAS 

ROAS (return on ad spend) is a crucial metric that is used to measure the total revenue generated on every dollar spent on marketing. By bringing together the investment and conversion metrics, Attribution Reports highlights the profit margin and ROAS at a campaign, ad group, creative, or keyword level.

Companies may define different ROAS thresholds based on the type of campaigns - such as Product Feature Promotion, Competitive Takeout, and Brand Building. Also, depending on whether the campaign is more experimental (entry into a new product category or new geographic territory) or a well-established one, the ROAS thresholds may be different. Granular ROAS data allows marketers to make data-informed bidding decisions resulting in cost savings and improvement in return metrics.

5. Non-Paid Channels vs Paid Channels

It has always been a struggle for Marketers to determine whether paid or non-paid channels help accelerate your sales. However, attribution reporting gives you an extensive overview of different channels (such as Paid Search, Social, Referrals, Review Sites, and Organic Content) and their contribution to pipeline and revenue.

For instance, Let’s assume your business is active on LinkedIn and drives traffic from the platform through posts and ad campaigns. But when a lead is converted through LinkedIn, you will need to know which tactic contributed to the result - Was it the organic posts or ad campaigns? 

With attribution reporting, you can determine whether the lead got converted organically from the posts you shared or the ads campaign you are running or whether both tactics played a part in the conversion. 

A distinction between direct and non-direct sources of traffic helps identify your PPC leads and your organic ones. This, in turn, helps both the paid marketing teams and the content marketing teams optimize their execution strategies.

6. Attributing Sales Funnel

Attribution reports also enable Marketers to go beyond a single conversion goal and visualize the entire marketing and sales funnel (Leads, Demos, SQLs, Pipeline, and Revenue) at a channel, campaign, or ad group level. 

Armed with this data, Marketers can get a sense of the conversion rates by channel for each stage and focus their efforts accordingly.

7. Get A Clear Picture With Data Visualization

Lastly, because the Attribution Reports and underlying data are exhaustive and cover the entire customer journey and channel mix, it may feel a bit daunting to analyze this data solely in tabular form. 

The report can include dimensions such as keywords (and associated metadata such as keyword match type), ad groups, campaigns, campaign themes, and channels, as well as metrics such as spend, impressions, clicks, CTR, and conversion metrics as well. 

Phew.. - quite a handful to analyze this table of 15+ columns and 100+ rows to unearth actionable insights. This is where intuitive visualizations play a role in facilitating a better understanding of the data through formats such as scatter plots, bar charts, and line vs bar visualizations.

Further, an AI-powered attribution tool like factors.ai  is capable of offering augmented features in a report, such as recommendations on campaign bidding, trends in cost per MQL and SQL, and much more) 

How Can Organizations Leverage Attribution Reports To Skyrocket Their Conversions?

Now that you know what you can learn from attribution reports, we will take you to the next step. After doing an in-depth attribution analysis, now is the time to take some steps to accelerate the momentum of the conversions. 

Following are some ways organizations can leverage attribution reports:  

1. To Create A Result-Driven Content Strategy 

A crucial part of online marketing is creating a content strategy to ensure that the content created will be focused on the customer journey stage they are in. 

With attribution data, marketers can get an overview of the entire customer journey and leverage it to build a result-driven content strategy. 

2. Where Should You Expend Your Marketing Efforts? 

We all know attribution reporting gives deep insights into which channels drive conversions and users. Therefore, we can focus on those specific channels and generate maximum leads.  

3. To Fully Understand The Customer’s Journey 

You may know which channel drove the conversions, but you should also know about the touchpoints your customer interacted with before converting. 

Attribution reporting has the capability to do so, and therefore, it allows you to fully understand the customer’s journey right from the start till the end. 

Understanding this will allow you to create more effective strategies and journey paths that are aligned with buyer preferences.

Bonus Information: What Is The Attribution Window? 

An attribution window, also known as a conversion window, is the timeframe within which conversion will be attributed to a touchpoint. In layperson’s words, it can be defined as a time frame between which a potential lead viewed/clicked on your ad/piece of content and later performed your desired conversion action

 For example, suppose your attribution window is 20 days. In that case, any touchpoints (like users interacting with your landing page) incurred by prospects will only be linked to a conversion (actions like a demo request) if it occurred within 20 days of the touchpoint. Attribution windows also help distinguish your fresh leads from your re-engaged ones and hence remove the impact of interactions that happened a while ago.

The total number of conversions can be skewed if you don’t set the right attribution window. If you look it up, they’re different recommendations on setting an attribution window. Some recommend as little as 7 days, while others suggest 90 or 180 days. 

Setting the attribution window is largely dependent on the expected conversion cycle from first visit to revenue as well as the internal understanding among Go to Market teams (Sales and Marketing) on what would be the appropriate conversion window. Our recommendation would be to compute your average conversion cycle based on historical data and set double that value, post aligning with the sales team.

Wrapping Up

Without a doubt, we can say that attribution reporting is the most effective way to understand and measure the impact of Marketing Efforts on business outcomes. Insights generated from marketing attribution can become your most valuable asset to drive maximum ROI. 

When picking a solution to power your Attribution reporting, you want the best of the best. So keep your eyes peeled for solutions that offer capabilities such as:

• Bring in touchpoints from across data sources - such as website events (digital marketing)and offline touchpoints (webinars, events, e-books, sales calls, and meetings)
  

• Attributing your entire marketing and sales funnel stages and rather than focusing on a single conversion point such as Leads.
• Present both baseline investment metrics and conversion metrics, with the computation of ROI at a channel, campaign, ad group, keyword, page URL, or Theme level.
• Has advanced features to distinguish between new business vs expansions or new leads vs reactivated ones.
  

Opting for a solution that has these capabilities and more can take your attribution reporting to the next level.

Get started with attribution reporting with Factors.ai 

Factors.ai is an AI-empowered attribution reporting tool that helps you to fuel your marketing efforts by effectively comparing and customizing attribution models to generate a clearer picture based on metrics. 

Factors.ai has the capability to create attribution reports at both company and user levels, can track both website and non-website events, and has a customized dashboard that collects and visualizes all crucial data in one place.

If you’re interested in taking your business to next level by analyzing your marketing efforts with robust multi-touch attribution modeling and deep data-driven insights to make an informed decision then, schedule a demo and start for FREE at factors.ai.

FAQs ‍

1. What does attribution mean in marketing?

In marketing, attribution refers to the process of identifying and assigning credit to the various marketing channels and touchpoints that contribute to a conversion [or any desired action]. 

By understanding the effectiveness of these different marketing channels, businesses can optimize their marketing budget and resources to maximize their ROI.

2. Why is attribution reporting important for marketers in 2023? 

Attribution reporting provides a holistic view of how different marketing channels work together to drive conversions and revenue. It enables marketers to see which channels drive the most conversions and revenue and which are driving the most users to their website or mobile app. 

With this information, marketers can make more informed decisions about where to allocate their marketing budget and resources.

Marketing today looks nothing like it did just a few years ago. You need to keep an eye on numerous campaigns on various channels, understand where your users are coming from, what drives them, possibilities of churn, and endless optimizations. For tasks like these, companies can’t help but rely on B2B marketing tools like Factors.ai and Bizible. 

Well-known in the marketing space, both of these tools come with a variety of capabilities and functionalities for analytics, attribution, personalization, and optimization to help B2B firms make better-informed marketing decisions. 

But how do you know which one’s right for you?

The following blog delves into the features offered by them and a comparative analysis of their respective strengths and weaknesses in the marketing analytics field. Curious how one of these tools can become part of your marketing arsenal? In this article, we’re covering everything from the features to pricing, integrations and even reviews for both Bizible and Factors! 

About Bizible

Bizible (now Marketo Measure) is a widely-used attribution tool aimed at providing B2B and B2C marketers with insights on their customer journey and revenue impact. It does so with strong touchpoint tracking and attribution modeling.

Bizible Integrations

The Adobe Marketo Measure (previously Bizible) extends its functionality to seamlessly integrate other tools to collect information on web source, medium, keyword, cookies, visitor behavior. Using this you can optimise your marketing strategies accordingly. Here are some of the tools that are supported by Bizible: 

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM (for custom objects, pre-built CRM reports, templates and dashboards)
• Marketo Engage 
• WordPress
• Salesforce Sales Cloud
• HubSpot Marketing Hub

Bizible Features

• Dedicated A/B testing integration, lets you track the revenue impact of your Optimizely and VWO site experiment. These experiments can provide insight to your marketing team to help optimize their campaigns and improve ROI.There are a few types of Marketo Measure A/B reports available to customers, which enable reporting on A/B Test results regarding leads, contacts, and opportunities.
• Dedicated Boomerang stage feature was designed to enhance visibility into the customer's journey, particularly for customers with extended sales cycles. Marketers are empowered by this feature to establish touchpoints at every stage transition throughout the Opportunity journey. For example, it captures scenarios where a contact progresses from MQL to SAL and subsequently returns to the MQL stage. This is known as the boomerang stage, or when contacts "re-enter the MQL stage" or "re-MQL." The Boomerang Stage feature seamlessly integrates with the Marketo Measure Custom Stages, working together to enhance the functionality.
  

• Multi-currency Compatibility which allows users to switch between different currencies for their reported spend and sales revenue. Currently, this feature covers  these two metrics.
  

About Factors. ai 

A compelling alternative to Bizible, Factors. ai comes into the picture as an AI-fueled marketing analytics and attribution platform that works with SME and mid-market B2B companies like Razorpay, Chargebee and Clickhouse. Not only does Factors.ai offer robust attribution capabilities, but it also provides a user-friendly interface and intuitive reporting tools. The platform is divided into 4 broad categories: 

1. Marketing and website analytics
2. Marketing attribution 
3. Journeys analytics 
4. Account identification.

Factors. ai Integrations

Factors has the ability to connect with advertising platforms, customer relationship management (CRM) systems, and customer data platforms (CDPs). Consequently, it can be used to track user actions across various touch points on a website, analyze campaign information, and even gather data from events recorded in the CRM. This comprehensive integration enables holistic analysis and reporting of data.

Factors. ai Features

Factors.ai comes bundled with unique features that aid attribution. 

1. User/account timeline: showcases all touchpoints for all users across their conversion journey over a span of time presented neatly on a timeline graph. This feature helps businesses identify valuable touchpoint data for all its users that can pinpoint every single step of every user’s conversion journey.
2. Customizable Stage Transitions: With this feature, users can track and optimize the customer journey by defining and customizing stage transitions that align with your unique sales cycles, allowing for granular analysis of each stage.
3. User-Friendly Interface: Users can enjoy a seamless and intuitive platform that makes it easy to navigate, visualize data, and access actionable insights, ensuring effortless usage for marketers of all skill levels.
4. Cross-Channel Analysis: It is also possible to analyze the performance of your marketing efforts across multiple channels, such as digital advertising, social media, email marketing, and more, to understand the synergistic effects and optimize cross-channel strategies.

How do the two compare?

Here is a table comparing the features that Bizible and Factors. ai come with:

In the next few paragraphs we will look at their strengths and weaknesses when pitted against each other with respect to integrations, attribution, onboarding and implementation, reporting quality, pricing, and privacy and compliance.

1. Integration

There are some points to consider when comparing the integration features of their tools. First off, the tools that these apps integrate with, do not completely overlap. For instance, Factors. ai does not integrate with Microsoft Dynamics Integration- Bizible does, and Bizible does not integrate with CDPs, which Factors. ai does. Second, Factors. Ai offers out-of-the-box integrations while Bizible comes with high developer dependency for tasks such as tracking HubSpot landing pages or integrating with LinkedIn.

Bizible can integrate with a wide range of applications and platforms. These popular apps span across CRM, CMS, marketing automation, email marketing, advertising platforms, web and sales analytic tools. Some of these commonly used platforms are Marketo, Google Ads, WordPress, MailChimp, Outreach and SalesLoft. 

Factors. Ai can also integrate with similar ad platforms, CRMs, and CDPs. CDP helps improve data quality, identify new audiences, and connect behavioral data. At the moment, Factors can integrate with third-party CDPs like Segment. 

2. Attribution

B2B marketing attribution is like detective work for marketers, uncovering the hidden fingerprints of success. It's an process that delves deep into the influence of various marketing touchpoints on coveted conversion goals, such as demos, pipeline growth, and revenue generation. The process involves employing a variety of multi-touch attribution models to evaluate and quantify the contribution of each marketing touchpoint towards achieving these objectives.

Factors. ai and Bizible both offer marketing attribution capabilities. They share a few similarities and differences.

Channels and Subchannels

Marketing Channels serve the purpose of categorizing and organizing your marketing activities for convenient reporting in both the Marketo Measure ROI Dashboard and your CRM system. Bizible offers 40 custom channels, which can be customized and renamed according to your organization's preferences. The Marketing Channel represents the broadest level of classification, encompassing various Subchannels. These Subchannels can be viewed as the specific "type" of source through which your leads are generated. Examples of Marketing Channels include Paid Search, Organic Search, Display, and Paid Social. Subchannels play a significant role in indicating the specific version or variation of the Marketing Channel used to attract leads.

Currently, Bizible offers 40 custom channels and 200 subchannels.  Channels and subchannels in Bizible attribution categorize and organize marketing touchpoints, providing insights into the performance of different marketing sources. This helps marketers understand the effectiveness of various channels and subchannels in driving conversions and revenue, informing decision-making and optimization strategies.

A business growing at a fast pace might opt for more channels to avoid chances of narrowing attribution and analytics. Factors.ai attribution does not specifically use the terminology of ‘channels’ and ‘subchannels’ in the same way as Bizible. Instead, Factors.ai focuses on integrating various data sources, such as ad platforms, CRMs, and CDPs, to provide a holistic view of marketing performance and customer journeys. It analyzes the impact of different touchpoints and events across the customer journey, offering comprehensive insights into marketing effectiveness and revenue attribution.

Attribution models: Factors.ai has the capability to create attribution reports at both company and user levels, can track both website and non-website events, and has a customized dashboard that collects and visualizes all crucial data in one place. Factors.ai also delivers 9 attribution models that include influence, time-decay, U-shaped and W-shaped.

Bizible offers 6 different attribution models that can help marketers decide what touchpoints are impactful in the customer journey. These are Lead creation, First-touch, U- shaped, W- shaped, Full- Path, and the Custom model. 

Attribution model funnels and metrics:

Bizible and Factors. ai both provide a range of metrics and filters to analyze attribution models and measure marketing performance. Here are some of the key metrics and filters offered: 

1. Revenue Attribution: Measures the revenue generated by each touchpoint or marketing source, providing insights into their contribution to the bottom line.
2. Conversion Attribution: Determines the contribution of each touchpoint to conversion events, allowing you to understand which marketing efforts are driving conversions.
3. Touchpoint Influence: Measures the influence of a specific touchpoint on conversions or revenue, providing a granular view of individual touchpoint performance.

These platforms also allow filters like: 

1. Time-based Filters: Can be used to analyze attribution data within specific time frames, such as daily, weekly, monthly, or custom date ranges.
2. Revenue Range Filters: You can set filters to analyze attribution data within specific revenue ranges, allowing you to focus on different tiers of revenue generation.

The difference between the two lies in Factors’ AI- driven approach to provide attribution models. With this information, you can dynamically allocate credit to marketing touchpoints based on their actual impact on revenue and conversions, and also forecast future performance by availing predictive analytics. Factors. ai also emphasizes seamless integration with CRM systems and marketing platforms.

3. Onboarding and Implementation

Setting up Bizible requires some level of dependency on developers. You might also require technical support from your development team for processes like creating a custom model. As per reviews on g2, the onboarding process can take a few months to fully complete. On the whole, Bizible works as a solid attribution tool, but reviewers often report problems with the onboarding and implementation.

Factors offers a quicker onboarding process of under 30 minutes, without requiring heavy-duty technical assistance. Factors’ tracking script can be set up directly or through Google Tag Manager in only a few minutes. Find out more about the process here. In case you're facing any difficulties, you can also get in touch with Factors' customer support team available round the clock.

4. Analytics/Reporting

Bizible has a wide selection of drill-through data. You can access marketing reports on the revenue by channel, closed revenue, contacts created, opportunities created, closed deals etc. It provides snapshots of CRM at any point in time and the distribution of records across opportunity stages.

Factors.ai can also extract and analyze relevant data points to give you a comprehensive overview of your customer relationships and interactions.The snapshot provided by Factors.ai may include key CRM metrics and visualizations, such as pipeline value, conversion rates, sales velocity, lead distribution, and performance trends. This enables you to have a holistic view of your CRM data and track the progress of your sales and marketing activities.

Bizible and Factors.ai both give you the option to visualize marketing data the way you want. If you connect to a business intelligence (BI) platform, you can present data with more flexible visual options. Standard metrics like bounce rates and monthly visitors are available on both Factors and Bizible, when integrated with data analytics platforms. 

5. Pricing

Bizible's pricing information is not available on their website. That said, according to reviews online, Bizible is 5% and 6% more expensive than the average attribution production, for small and mid sized businesses respectively. 

This is not very convenient for SMEs and startups. However, according to GetApp, Bizible scores high with 4.8 out of 5 stars on the value of money rating. They allow a maximum of 25 users per plan. It is important to note that this number can vary with lower plans. 

Factors. ai pricing is geared to cater to startups and SMEs. Their high tier growth plan is more affordable for these businesses and comes with customer support and functionality. They also offer specific plans that are purpose-built for your business’s unique analytical and attribution requirements. They also allow unlimited users per plan. 

What is the right option for you?

Ultimately, the choice between Bizible and Factors.ai depends on your specific requirements and priorities. Bizible may be a good fit if you prioritize strong touchpoint tracking and existing integrations with tools like Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Marketo Engage. Furthermore, Bizible pricing is considered appropriately priced by users. On the other hand, Factors.ai offers AI-driven attribution models, customization options, and a user-friendly interface, making it a compelling option for those seeking a more agile and appropriate solution for startups and SMEs.

Consider your business's needs, budget, and desired features to determine which platform aligns best with your goals and will empower your marketing team to make better-informed decisions. The choice between the two depends on the specific requirements, the importance placed on factors such as AI-driven attribution, customization, predictive analytics, and user interface. Evaluating these differences can help determine which platform better aligns with your organization's marketing measurement requirements in terms of attribution modeling and the depth of integration needed. If you’re interested in seeing how Factors.ai could align with your business, schedule a personalized demo here. 

Wondering how Factors fares against other top analytics tools? Here are some quick reads: 

1. Factors vs Google Analytics
2. Factors Amplitude
3. Factors vs Dreamdata
4. Factors vs HubSpot Analytics

Factors vs. Dreamdata: Pricing, features & reviews

Marketing analytics. Revenue attribution. Customer Journey mapping. Three invaluable use-cases, two all-encompassing alternatives, and one right choice for B2B marketers. 

The following blog comments on two powerful off-the-shelf B2B attribution and analytics platforms, Factors and Dreamdata, to determine why the former may be a better fit. We elaborate on key benefits and exclusives that Factors provide, which ultimately lends itself to being the preferred B2B marketing attribution and analytics solution.

‍Dreamdata Vs. Factors.ai: Common features and use-cases‍

When it comes down to it, both Factors and Dreamdata are proficient B2B attribution and marketing analytics tools. Before we pick apart some differences, let’s highlight some similarities between the two solutions:

Multi-touch Attribution

For a marketer, multi-touch attribution forms the bridge between prospects’ marketing touchpoints and deal won revenue. The purpose of marketing attribution is to help teams optimize their resource allocation and eliminate poor marketing spend. But for an attribution solution to be truly effective, it ought to be functional, adaptable and intuitive. Both Factors and Dreamdata are equipped with powerful multi-touch attribution modeling that’s capable of assigning value to touchpoint data across the funnel based on revenue impact.

Marketing analytics 

Factors and Dreamdata are versatile solutions built upon strong analytical foundations. Both B2B marketing solutions make use of performance analytics and real time event reporting to fulfill your business's tracking and analytical requirements . This would include tracking and reporting essential site metrics, paid campaigns, organic metrics and more.

Customer success

Customer success management is a crucial component of onboarding, troubleshooting, and deriving the most value from a tool. Both Factors and Dreamdata have both received high praise for their customer service in the onboarding processes and dedicated support for a pleasant experience. What must be noted is that unlike Dreamdata, Factors.ai provides dedicated support across all its plans — not only high tier ones.

Dreamdata vs Factors.ai: Pricing & Plans

Let's get down to brass tacks. First, we discuss the difference in pricing between Factors and Dreamdata. Your martech investment decision should revolve around one thing: ROI. Ideally, you’re looking for a cost-effective solution that doesn’t compromise on its service value.

Here are 4 reasons why Factors is the most cost-effective Dreamdata alternative:

1. Economical plans with Factors: As of today, Dreamdata’s paid plans start at $999/month. This is more expensive than even Factors’s higher tier growth plans ($799/month). Accordingly, Factors is generally better-suited to SME start-ups looking for a wider range of features.  
2. User seat limitation: Dreamdata has restricted user seats per tier. Starting with 5 seats, all the way up to 10 for their highest tier business plan. Factors have no user seat limitation for all tiers.
3. Limited stage models: Dreamdata offers limited user stage models, which is a filter that allows users to segment their customers or leads. Alternatively, Factors can create endless custom user stage models.
4. Dedicated support: Dreamdata’s dedicated support and onboarding is only available in their highest business tier plan. Factors.ai has no such restrictions. It offers the following benefits across all pricing plans and tiers:

1. End-to-end onboarding support
2. Dedicated customer success manager
3. Connected slack channel

In conclusion, we believe that Factors’ pricing plans are more cost-effective and accessible to that of Dreamdata’s. Despite this, Dreamdata does offer basic website analytics for free. While we don’t do this, we do offer a free 14-day trial of our entire platform.

Why B2B Marketers Love Factors.ai

This section highlights a catalog of features that cannot be found using Dreamdata and are exclusive to Factors’ users:

#1. AI-powered “Explain”

Explain is a one of it's kind AI tool that empowers marketers with automated insights into what's helping and hurting conversions. And the best part? The conversion goal is 100% flexible: demos, MQLs, newsletter downloads, web sessions, or any other touchpoint you're interested in optimizing.

Factors will then run thousands of funnel queries and rank the insights using artificial intelligence before neatly presenting them to you. These insights will be separated into columns that show positive (above average conversion rate) and negative (below average conversion rate) ratings. Each column lists different combinations of conversion paths that can be further broken down into sub insights that show even more conversion paths. 

#2. Account Intelligence

Factors partners with industry-leading data partners to provide IP-based account deanonymization. In short, this means that users can discover high-intent companies engaging with the website, product reviews, or ads — but are yet to convert. This in turn empowers efficient marketing and intent-based sales outreach.

#3. Slack and Email alerts

This nifty feature allows users to configure automated alerts that keep users up to date with their KPIs’ progress or regression over a predefined interval. Users can pick from several default KPI or use their custom built ones and apply filters for specific insights. Once this is done, users can configure a criteria for triggering the alert which can be for example, an increase or decrease by 10%. Factors will then send alerts to your slack and/or email once every interval that you select, with the last interval period serving as the comparison for your new insights.

#4. Path analysis

The path analysis feature in Factors presents a complete overview of the entire event journey and the number of prospects in the form of something akin to a tree data structure. This feature breaks down specified events into a number of steps, both of which are configurable, and will display the number of prospects within each unique event path.

#5. Auto button click tracking

Another feature exclusive to Factors in this comparison is the automatic button click tracking. As the name implies, this feature and as complicated as it is code-wise, requires no developer dependency to set up. And can ironically start tracking button clicks with the click of a button. It also displays the total number of clicks right next to each button click.

And this concludes our comparison. If you want to substantiate these claims and are interested in learning more about Factors.ai. Feel free to schedule a personalized demo.

Several analytical solutions are available for B2B marketers to track and analyze data for their businesses. Two of the most popular choices are Heap and Mixpanel. Though both tools share significant similarities, they also distinguish themselves with unique features and capabilities. 

In this article, we introduce both tools, explain how they are set up, and share key features and limitations to help you make an informed purchase decision. 

Without any delay, let’s delve into it. 

What is Heap?

Heap is a unique digital analytics platform that automatically captures customers’ interactions, analyzes them, and generates actionable insights to improve customer experience, retention, and conversions. 

Heap can track user interactions on websites and mobile apps, allowing businesses to analyze their customer's behaviors and generate data-driven insights.

The tool has a wide range of features, including automatic event tracking, retroactive data capture, and real-time reporting. Heap also allows businesses to segment their data by users, sessions, and events, making it easier to identify trends and patterns. 

Heap’s key features include

1. Customer 360 analytics captures all user interactions and actions on your website and/or mobile app and sends data to your data warehouse to get a comprehensive understanding of the customers' journeys.
2. Funnel optimization helps remove friction and optimize the customer journey to increase conversion rates.
3. Intuitive dashboards help track your critical business metrics and coordinate insights-driven action across the organization.
4. Integrates with 50+ sources/websites ranging from CRM and attribution platforms to marketing automation and user onboarding & adoption platforms. 
5. Usage Tracking/Analytics, allows detailed tracking and analysis of users' interactions within your website and/or mobile app.

What is Mixpanel?

Mixpanel is a product analytics platform that helps businesses improve user experience by tracking and analyzing user interactions with their website or mobile app

Mixpanel equips businesses with insightful reports surrounding user interactions, monitoring the growth of key user cohorts and even comparing current trends with earlier ones. 

The tool also illustrates the user flow within your website/mobile app, discovering the paths taken by users before they make a purchase. Moreover, the flow helps businesses locate friction in the user journey. 

Some of the key features of Mixpanels are

• KPI monitoring, keeping track of the status of previously identified performance measurements. 
• Data integration, integrating or connecting with different sources/apps for analysis and dashboard preparation
• Customer journey mapping, visualizing every interaction made by the user with the business 
• Funnel analysis, mapping the user flow to a set of funnel steps that results in conversion [achieve desired results in general]
• Customer segmentation, segmenting users based on attributes, cohorts or actions to uncover engagement drivers.

Getting started with Heap

Heap is easy to implement as it does not require extensive coding, removing the dependency on software developers. 

To set Heap up, you need to sign up for an account, add a tracking code to your website, and adjust your settings. The time taken to complete the set-up process may vary depending on the complexity of your website and the type of data you want to track. 

Also, after the installation, Heap will automatically track data retroactively.

Setting up Mixpanel

As for the time needed for implementation, the Mixpanel team assures that the entire process will take less than 15 minutes, but it depends on the complexity of the website and the tech stack used. They are also providing codeless implementation by partnering with Freshpaint, in which case, they say the time taken will stretch to 30 minutes.

The tool's main downside is its lack of codeless automation for retroactive tracking, but recently, they have partnered with Freshpaint to allow users to choose between codeless or coded tracking. 

Heap vs Mixpanel: Deep Dive

Heap and Mixpanel are both popular digital analytics tools with unique features and capabilities. So it's essential to understand their key differences before deciding which is the best fit for your business needs.

1. How Event Tracking Works in Heap vs. Mixpanel

The capability to monitor events, such as individual user actions like button clicks, form submissions, page views, etc., and is an essential feature for all marketing analytics tool. Luckily both Heap and Mixpanel  provides this functionality. The only difference is that Heap automatically tracks them, while Mixpanel requires you to instrument custom code on the website to start tracking events. 

Even though Heap tracks events automatically throughout the website, they also deliver a custom option for users to manually track and enrich their dataset with flexible APIs that capture clients and server-side events.

As for Mixpanel, like Heap, a tracking code must be installed on the website or mobile app. Once that's done, businesses can set up events to track. This can be done using the Mixpanel JavaScript library, which provides a simple way to track events and send data to Mixpanel.

Mixpanel's wide-range of APIs offers businesses an alternate approach to tracking events across servers, mobile apps, and other sources. 

But the real problem with event tracking is when it comes to tracking non-website events.

Marketing is not just about the things that happen on the website. In a typical B2B customer journey, touchpoints such as webinars, gated content, meetings, sales calls, field events, and so on play a crucial role in moving the customer down the funnel. This function is absent in both of the tools, which limits their applicability in a B2B context.

This is where marketing analytics tools like Factors come into play. The tool can help businesses track both website and non-website events and overcome the said limitation. 

2. Custom Dashboards and Reporting 

A good dashboard requires the ability to customize dashboards with the data you want to track. This helps to provide an overall insight without jumping tabs.

Dashboards in Mixpanel and Heap are customizable, and users can create multiple ones for the KPIs you want to track. They provide options for filtering charts, categorizing dashboards, and so on. 

Following are examples of how each of their dashboards looks like. 

Heap:

Mixpanel: 

But even though both tools make these arguments, the most common issues related to them are their slow customer support, the requirement for basic technical knowledge for usage, their limited documentation, etc. 

According to reviews on platforms like G2, TrustRadius, and Capterra, when it comes to dashboarding and reporting, the users have found 

• The dashboard’s functionality to be limiting as they can’t add certain types of reports,
• The intuitive UI is found to be confusing and not so easy to use.
• Creation of dashboards to be time-consuming. 
• There is a lack of more explicit filters in the dashboard

The above-mentioned are a few of the many suggestions and cons in their users’ reviews. 

While both Heap and Mixpanel are working to address their limitations, there are other options available in the market that may also meet the needs of users. Factors is one such example.

Factors provide visualization of every bit of information, data-driven insights, and emphasizes any fluctuations or changes from the ordinary, and all are available within a single dashboard. 

3. User Segmentation

Both Heap and Mixpanel offer user segmentation features that allow businesses to group users based on their characteristics and behavior. However, this feature's functionality and ease of use differs between the tools.

Based on Functionality

Heap's Segments feature allows businesses to create custom segments based on events, properties, and time. On top of that, it also allows businesses to track user behavior retroactively.

On the other hand, Mixpanel's segmentation feature allows businesses to segment data by user, session, and event; and create custom reports and dashboards. And based on the segments, the tool allows businesses to conduct A/B testing and in-app messaging as well.

Based on Ease of Use

Heap's Segments feature is comparatively simple, with a dedicated "Segments" option that makes creating and managing segments easy. 

Whereas in Mixpanel, its user segmentation feature is also easy to use though it may take some time to learn how to navigate through the different options to undertake cohort analysis and custom segmentation.

The crucial aspect to keep in mind is that the ability to segment users relies on the data that the analytics tool has about them. Unfortunately, Heap and Mixpanel lack robust integrations with CRM systems to bring in CRM data for segmentation. 

Though both platforms have integration with HubSpot (or, equivalently, Salesforce) for the purpose, Heap only pulls in two data sets from Hubspot, Email Interactions and Contact Properties. And, Mixpanel's integration with Hubspot is even more limiting and only syncs user properties with none of the CRM event objects. 

But both platforms do not provide options for other valuable data sets such as Company Properties, Deal Properties, and Deal Progression, as well as Events recorded in CRM such as Form Submissions, List Additions, Sales Calls, and Meetings, which are critical for B2B companies. 

However, Factors excels in this regard as it supports CRM integration with HubSpot and Salesforce and can help B2B businesses in tracking contact, account, and opportunity properties as well as all events, campaigns, and activities recorded in the CRM.

4. Insights

This is a unique feature Mixpanel has over Heap. The main focus of this feature is to visualize trends and compositions in the acquired data. It allows users to analyze events and user profiles, compare current data with previous data, create custom events, and more. 

Using the insight feature, a business can track and analyze the performance of different UTM sources and identify which source generates more conversions or any desired results. This would further help businesses optimize their marketing strategy and drive more conversions.

In insights, the metrics calculated across the entire time period will be visualized in simple bar graphs, stacked bar graphs, or pie charts. Following is an example of the pie chart. 

And for the metrics calculated for segmented time, the feature uses a line chart or stacked line chart for visualization. The following is a stacked line graph for reference. 

On the other hand, Heap has the Illuminate feature. It utilizes a data science layer to analyze a dataset and automatically identifies insights that lead to significant business results, even for events that weren't tracked previously. Also, the tool can uncover insights that would be missed by other tools, leading to better business results. 

Though this feature is limited compared to Mixpanel's Insights, it helps businesses to find hidden opportunities and frictions and understand whether the user behavior is hurting or helping with conversions. 

5. Integrations

Heap and Mixpanel offer integration capabilities with over 50 tools, allowing businesses to combine data from different sources.

The Heap Connect in Heap allows businesses to bring user data into data warehouses such as Snowflake and Redshift. 

Mixpanel allows integration with tools like AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. 

Though they both provide integration with common sources like Zendesk, HubSpot, Salesforce, and Segment, the tools also provide some unique integrations as well.

Some unique integrations with Heap are

1. Shopify
2. FullStory
3. Clearbit
4. RedShift
5. Eloqua

Some unique integrations with Mixpanel are

1. Slack
2. Adapty
3. Apptimize
4. Elevar
5. Microsoft Azure

6. User Timeline

A user timeline refers to the visual representation of a specific user’s actions and behavior over time within and outside a website. It shows each user’s visits to a website, downloads, engagement with emails, and other activities in touchpoints. It is essential to gain insights into the user’s interests, preferences, and behavior, which further helps marketers customize their campaigns.  

The Group Analytics feature is the closest thing Mixpanel has to a user timeline. Though it doesn’t necessarily provide a timeline, the feature enables marketers to track each target account’s engagement within the website. It also allows marketers to identify upsell opportunities and churn risks. 

Heap, however, has a User & Session View feature that enables marketers to see granular, user-level data on how each user interacts with the website/app. It also presents a list of users in reverse chronological order based on their most recent activities. 

The timeline of this activity can be adjusted from the last 7 days to the date the user first interacted with the website/app. 

Both Heap’s and Mixpanel’s features do not account for offline touchpoints of the users/accounts or provide an extensive view of the user timeline.

So if you are looking for a tool that can empower businesses with a detailed account of each user’s timeline and engagement with the website, then Factors would be a good choice. 

With Factors.ai, a business can get an account-level timeline as well as user-level timelines through deanonymization. Also, the tool brings in all key touchpoints, including meetings, calls, web data, app data, etc., whereas the others [Heap and Mixpanel] focus only on the web and app data.

Following is a view of the account-level timeline in Factors.

Following is a view of the user-level timeline in Factors.

Heap vs Mixpanel: Pricing 

The pricing plans of these tools differ based on the features that come with each plan. 

Given below is the pricing plan of Heap. And from it, you can see that there is a lack of transparency in the plans, and you have to contact them to get an idea of the overall expenditure. 

On top of the free plan, they also allow a “7-day free trial”.

Mixpanel provides a free option with limited features and a pricing of $25 per month for the basic plan. But like Heap, Mixpanel also requires prospects to contact the team to upgrade the plan and get estimated pricing for their enterprise plan. 

Recap

Heap and Mixpanel are both great analytics platforms with their own pros and cons. To give you an overview of both tools’ strengths and weaknesses, please take a look at the following tables.

Heap: Pros and Cons

Pros

• Automatic retroactive tracking
• Customizable dashboard
• Rapid implementation [codeless]
• Provide necessary integrations
• Can create custom segments based on different metrics

Cons

• Does not provide deeper insights into trends compared to Mixpanel’s Insight feature.
• Though the dashboard is customizable, it is more product analytics oriented. 

Mixpanel: Pros and Cons

Pros

• Can track both event-level, and user-level data
• The insights feature helps visualize trends and compositions in data
• Provide necessary integrations 
• Allows customization of dashboards
• Can compute retroactive tracking

Cons

• Requires dedicated developers to implement.
• Even though they allow codeless implementation with Freshpaint, the implementation can consume more time. 
• Has intuitive dashboards but is complex from a marketing point of view.
• Doesn’t have automatic retroactive tracking.
• Since it requires codes, continuous tag maintenance is required.

Limitations of Heap and Mixpanel

Both these tools provide options for both product and marketing analytics. But at the present day, these tools are best used and known for product analytics. And so, the features they both provide tends to focus more on the product. It means a marketing professional trying to use these tools will need help getting around the tool. 

Also, non-website event tracking is absent in both tools, which limits the data acquired surrounding a business’s users. Considering that every insight made by these tools is based on these data, it’s safe to say that they are not the perfect fit for marketing analytics. 

Still on the Fence? Complete Your Analytics Stack with Factors

In conclusion, Heap and Mixpanel are both popular analytics tools that provide businesses with powerful features for tracking and measuring user interactions and behavior. They both offer a wide range of features, helping businesses with event tracking, event reports, identifying UTM sources, and more. 

Heap and Mixpanel are known for focusing on products rather than marketing analytics. So, it's worth considering other options that may better align with your business needs and goals, particularly when it comes to marketing analytics.

Factors is a marketing analytics tool built for B2B and SaaS marketers with a focus on account-based analytics and robust  CRM integrations. The tool is purpose-built for marketers and has an advanced multi-touch attribution feature at an account level covering website and offline touchpoints. 

Its UI is simple and easy to use, and it takes about 15-20 minutes to set it up. You can sign up for FREE and learn how Factors can transform your marketing operations.

FAQs 

1. What data does Heap collect?

Heap collects user interactions and user behavior data on a website or mobile app. It includes data on events such as button clicks, form submissions, page views, and user properties such as device type and location.

2. Where does Heap io store data?

The collected data is stored on secure cloud-based servers. Heap also uses Heap connect to connect with data warehouses like Redshift and snowflake for the purpose too. 

3. What is the use of Mixpanel?

The primary use of Mixpanel is to track and measure user interactions and user behaviors on a website or mobile app. It allows businesses to understand how customers engage with their products/services and generate actionable insights to improve their UX. 

4. Does Mixpanel require coding?

Yes, it does require coding, which is, in fact, a downside of using Mixpanel. You will need tech support to create/write codes that can help track events. However, recently, Mixpanel has partnered with Freshpaint to make the codeless implementation available for their users.